The US Drug Enforcement Agency is getting ready to allow highly addictive meds, including powerful painkillers, to be prescribed online, something that health insurers and large employers have been pushing, the Associated Press reports.

Under current government rules, docs are required to write out by hand prescriptions for controlled substances, which include attention-deficit disorder drugs like Shire’s Adderall and painkillers like Cephalon’s Fentora. The concern is that patients are more likely to abuse these treatments, and their prescriptions should be monitored more closely.

But the DEA will soon publish a proposal that would allow docs to prescribe such drugs electronically, according to an agency spokeswoman Rogene Waite, while declining to say which specific drug classes will be affected by the change. However, the DEA will take comments on the proposal before reworking it and establishing a final rule.

Insurers and large employers like Wal-Mart have all lobbied to allow electronic prescribing of controlled drugs, and argue that online prescriptions are an easy way to avoid deadly medication errors and reduce health care costs, the AP writes. By paving the way for electronic prescribing of widely used controlled substances, experts expect that more doctors will be willing to embrace the technology.

Congress, the AP also points out, is expected to vote this month on a Medicare bill that will include incentives and penalties to encourage doctors to prescribe electronically. Barr Pharmaceuticals and prescribing software makers like Allscripts Healthcare Solutions are among the companies that have thrown their support behind the effort, the AP writes.